


Nice Guys Finish Last (4)

by anotherFMAfan



Series: Nice Guys Finish Last [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Jean Havoc Appreciation Week, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 00:38:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10820088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherFMAfan/pseuds/anotherFMAfan
Summary: "You're just a sore loser," Edward threw back. "Come on! Take it off!" Future HavocXRoyXEd.Language and adult themes, alcohol use. AU in which Al is restored; Ed is 17. OCs.





	Nice Guys Finish Last (4)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Jean Havoc Appreciation Week, April 24th, "Strip Havoc Naked Day."

Havoc had a bad feeling about the whole thing from the start.  
  
For one, any time the colonel used phrases like "resort to more drastic measures," the result was going to be good for no one.  
  
Except the colonel, of course.  
  
For another, there was a strange sort of crazed, overwork-induced high going on in the whole group before they'd even arrived at the restaurant. Fuery kept snickering at odd moments, and even Falman seemed excited, which was an event rarer than an eclipse (when Havoc had mentioned that, Falman had replied he would need to know the type of eclipse he had in mind in order to get the proper nuance of that insult, and Havoc just told him to forget it). Edward was acting like he was fifteen again, he and the colonel going at it with the jabs like the old days. Havoc had to admit the captain seemed to like the back-and-forth, or at least, if the colonel’s reading of her was to be believed, she did; she followed the barbed words with her eyes as they flew across the car the same way she'd followed Jean’s movements around the office all afternoon.  
  
By the time they had all filed out of the cars into their private room and passed the first beers around, they probably already qualified as on the waiters' shit-list. No one was even drinking yet, but Mustang had to call for quiet in order to give the toast.  
  
"Welcome, Captain, Lieutenant, Lieutenant," he said, nodding to each in turn. "I feel the best thing for our future cooperative relationship would be for me not to keep you from your beers too long. Cheers!"  
  
"Hear, hear!"  
  
The hearty cry was following by a lot of clinking of glasses, and Breda had finished most of his first before Havoc had finished getting to everyone.  
  
It wasn't even nine by the time they had finished their courtesy rounds and were all thoroughly buzzed, and Jean couldn’t fight the impression that the room was teetering on the edge of the steep slope down to out-of-control.  
  
Havoc was already more buzzed himself than he would have liked. He had planned on just having one or two glasses, but Mustang had deliberately seated him right in between the two people in the room who seemed he most determined to get Jean plastered\-- namely, himself and the captain.  
  
The captain, when not working, was really as different from the impression he had obtained that afternoon as could be--especially now that she had emptied most of a pitcher of Central’s finest lager. She could talk about anything without sounding pretentious, spent most of the time smiling, and had a soft, light laugh that was feminine without being girly. She was also impeccably well-mannered, and never let the beer in Havoc's glass get low for longer than it took for him to set it down. Before he knew it, he had completely lost track of how much he might have drunk, but it was past “a few glasses,” of that he was sure.  
  
When the captain excused herself from the table for a moment, Havoc took the opportunity to gulp down some water, right before a metal hand landed in a slap on his back.  
  
"How's it going, hotstuff?" said Edward as Jean coughed the water out of his lungs. "She looks like she's starting to have a good time."  
  
"Warming up a bit, yes," the colonel agreed from Jean’s other side, "but we've still got a way to go. If things proceed as expected, it should turn out perfectly."  
  
Havoc glanced at Roy's face suspiciously. He sure hoped he didn't expect Havoc to have anything to do with--  
  
"We're countin' on you, lieutenant!" Edward cackled.  
  
"For what?!" Jean demanded in alarm, whipping around, but he only got a glimpse of Edward's shit-eating grin as he retreated back to his seat, where Breda and one of the lieutenants were laughing with a vigor only copious amounts of alcohol could provide.  
  
"Sorry to have interrupted," said the captain as she sat back down, immediately taking the bottle of beer in hand and adding to Havoc's glass, though he hadn't actually drunk any since the last time she had done so. "Please, lieutenant; you were saying?"  
  
Mustang was smirking like the bastard he was, Jean could just tell. But he was only human, goddamn it, and when was the last time a woman had listened to him talk like this when it wasn't their job? Hell, not even the madam of that place on third street paid this much attention to him. If the captain ever decided to take on hostessing, he mused, she could make a fortune without even a stitch of plastic surgery; and he was then immediately alarmed that he was drunk enough to think something like that, because that was only a step or two away from being drunk enough to say it out loud, which was usually where the slapping occurred.  
  
With all the food finished, they had one of the tables removed by the wait staff, and as they all got close and comfortable around one, Havoc began to dimly recognize this as a bad sign. Sure enough, as he looked around the table, he saw Edward was shuffling a deck of well-loved cards.  
  
"Oh, no," he said, stabbing a finger in Edward's direction. "No, no, no, absolooly not!"  
  
"'Absolooly' yes," Ed grinned toothily.  
  
"Well leave me the hell out of it," he said, putting up his hands.  
  
"You don't like drinking games, Jean?" Johnson asked. Havoc looked at her in surprise. That was the first time she had used his name… Her large cheekbones had taken on a rosy hue, and her pupils were dilated, making her eyes look bigger than usual as she gazed up at him, awaiting his reply.  
  
"Well," he stalled, and Mustang chuckled openly at him.  
  
Before he could continue, the waiter arrived bearing a tray full of little shot-glasses, and Havoc groaned the woe of his fate as sealed.  
  
Jean didn’t do too badly for the first few games, but he took a shot for the third, and the fifth. Edward, who was the only one underage and not drinking booze, was both dealer for card-related games and overall referee, and it quickly became apparent that he had every intention of ruling against Havoc whenever he could.  
  
“Alright!” Ed announced once the cheering for the shot Mustang took had died down. “Time for a new game, and time to up the stakes! The sorry bastard who loses has to take a punishment!”  
  
This brought a round of cheers, and Breda threw his arm over Jean’s shoulder, grinning drunkenly at him.  
  
“Et tu, Brute?” Havoc growled at him. Even as hammered as he was, he had no illusions about who was going to end up the big loser of the night, in one way or another.  
  
The one thing Havoc had to hand to the colonel on his plan was that the captain seemed well on her way to having the time of her life. She wolf-whistled when one of her lieutenants was forced to dance the latest trend, and laughed herself to tears when Fuery lost and had his work-shirt transmuted into a lacy pink corset.  
  
“Alright, next game, the loser has to strip to their boxers! ...And braziers, when applicable,” Ed cackled, and a fresh round of pointing and laughing at Fuery broke out.  
  
“Alright, gentlemen, you know the rules,” said Breda, and Havoc noted that while several people spoke up to insist on an explanation of the game for their guests, no one, including the captain, objected to her being called a “gentleman.” Then again, she was probably every bit as used to it as Hawkeye was.  
  
Relative quiet settled over the table as they started the next round. Havoc tried to blink his eyes straight and focus, but the shots he’d taken on top of all that beer were churning hot in his stomach, and the floor didn’t want to stay still under where he sat. He cleared his throat and locked his eyes on Ed’s hand as best he could, waiting for the signal to start. The most frustrating thing about this particular game is that it was ridiculously simple...to anyone who wasn't three sheets to the wind.   
  
Ed dropped his hand and announced where the round would start. “Breda!”  
  
Heymans pointed at the taller lieutenant, who pointed at Falman; without missing a beat, Falman pointed at the two sitting at the middle of the table on both sides, Jean and the colonel.   
  
Havoc was ready, and pointed across the table at Mustang at the exact moment that Mustang pointed at him.  
  
“Too slow! OUT! Lieutenant Havoc loses!”  
  
“What?!” Jean objected, but couldn’t hear himself over the din. “No fuckin’ way I did!”   
  
The shot was passed around the table to him, heedless, and the dark-haired lieutenant shoved it in his face, spilling half of it in the process, until Jean gave in and took it himself so as to avoid being drowned.  
  
Breda dragged him by his shoulders away from the table, and then hauled him to his feet, though once there Jean was as much keeping Breda from falling down as Breda was propping Havoc up.  
  
“Strip!” ordered the short blond demon from the back, grinning a sharp smile full of teeth.  
  
“You’re a dirty ref!” Havoc accused as Breda abandoned him in favor of a seat with a good view, and Havoc was standing there alone.  
  
“You’re just a sore loser,” Edward threw back. “Come on! Take it off!”  
  
The cheer was taken up by the general assembly. Havoc’s head was spinning, his face heating with embarrassment or liquor--both-- as each second passed and the chant grew louder. But, well, it wouldn’t be the first time (though perhaps the first with a female officer present) and it was only to his boxers. The faster he did it, the faster it would be over with, because he knew there was no getting out of it now. The mob mentality was thick in the air. Havoc couldn't tell if he was too drunk or if Falman was actually shouting every bit as loudly as the rest of them, but at the moment he had other things to worry about.  
  
Jean kicked off his boots as he undid his belt, fingers fumbling both because he was really past the point of fine motor control and because of the wave of the whistling and hooting that started as he began to comply, and all those eyes on him. He pulled his shirt off over his head, trying to ignore whatever Mustang was calling at him over the general clamor, and kicked off his pants as fast as he could, desperate to get it over with.  
  
Jean held out his arms and turned around, wobbling in a circle as the room reveled in his misery on display. As he came full circle to face the front again, he finally felt a sliver of relief. There, he had done his duty; now he could finally retreat to the back of the room with his pants, nurse his wounded pride, and try to drink this new embarrassing incident to oblivion.   
  
But Breda, being Havoc's friend of many long years and, in that moment, the biggest asshole Jean had ever met in his entire life, had other plans. He reached over, snagged the waistline of Havoc’s boxers, and pulled them down around his ankles to a swelling chorus of cheers\-- Captain Johnson’s the loudest of all, fists in the air.

**Author's Note:**

> The drinking game is just a generic pointing-type game like "Pin Pon Pan."
> 
> This series will be completed next year during Havoc Week 2018.


End file.
